A Stranger Now Unto Me

Double trouble from The Stranger. First, Twitterer @yanokwa tweeted The Stranger’s Letter of the Day, which reads, in part:

It seems that with money, education, children, and having grown up the people of Wallingford have come to the conclusion that tipping is not something they want to do….Funny, I spent 3 years on the Hill as a barista, and had homeless tip, people looking like crackheads, people wanted by the law, students, alcoholics, hipsters, socially inept, hell, a mix of oddballs and the educated from all walks of life. But then moving to Wallingford, the cheap students, cheap families, cheap people, and no crackhead tranny hookers—damn how I miss them—but alas it is all in the upbringing, how your lame-ass parents raised you to be selfish. People chat, talk, serve, and go above and beyond and you use them with no thanks…Please, people of Wallingford, students, tip those that serve you.

Wallyhood tips 20% on the bill (though not on tax), rounding up to the nearest dollar, and in all our 16 years in Wallingford, we’ve generally seen the same by our neighbors. We can only imagine that the reason the writer is no longer holding his fabulous, tip-wealthy job on tip-heavy Capitol Hill was that he was removed for incompetence. Indeed, we would have let this whole incident pass without note were it not the second slap The Stranger has dealt Wallingford in the past month.

Read, dear neighbors, the scandalous filth The Stranger has seen fit to besmirch its pages and our reputation with. But please, put your coffee down first. We wouldn’t want your screen sprayed with machiatto mist.

Quoting Jennifer Roth, co-producer of the Sundance-bound Robin Williams film “World’s Greatest Dad”:

“Well, it all began when the producers [of Dad] started talking about where to shoot the film. I was on board at this point, and I put it in their heads to shoot in Seattle because a new tax incentive passed, [reimbursing] 20 percent of what you spend in Washington…But there was only one problem: Seattle has too much personality, and the director wanted the city to be anonymous. But we were able to find places [without personality] in Wallingford, Loyal Heights, even downtown.”

Without…personality?! Comparing us to Loyal Heights!

If by “without personality”, you mean we lack the abundance of crack-addled hookers that the tip-monger above pined for (and for which Capitol Hill and Belltown are better known), then yes, perhaps we are guilty as charged. But nobody who has strode from the divey depths of Al’s Tavern and the Pacific Inn to the heights of Joule, Tilth, Sutra and Cantinetta, nobody who has seen the hills and dells of Gasworks and cloistered solitude of the Good Shepherd, nobody who has lost themselves in the turning maze of Tangletown or long-boarded down Wallingford Ave from 45th to Gasworks, nobody who has tasted these splendors can rightly say we are without personality.

The Stranger’s Capitol Hill cabal has done a grave injustice. Perhaps these insults are considered acceptable when shouted over the braying lyrics of their favorite indie band, slouching in the corner of their grimy club, plastic cup of beer and cheap wristband bought for $10 cover, but it does not fly in this neck of the woods.

We await your apology, sirs.